A Guide to Climbing Techniques & Drills for Beginners

I’ve been climbing since I was a kid. Rocks, trees, mountains–you name it, and I’ve found my way to the top.

I love the outdoors and getting out in nature as much as possible, but climbing is so much more than that. The ability to climb on a whim is one of the most freeing activities.

Plus, it’s a truly full-body sport that helps you gain strength, control, and even mental adaptability.

If you’ve never climbed in your life, it’s a skill with countless benefits, including strength in the hands, shoulders, legs, and most other body parts you can think of. It will help you become more creative with how you use your body, and improve your mental fortitude through patience and perseverance.

In this tutorial, I’ll share some techniques and variations for rope and wall climbing, and I’ll also show you how locomotive drills can help you ease your way into climbing and help you get stronger with it.

Climbing is Chock Full of Benefits

You may be thinking that climbing is only suited for people with extreme upper body strength, or only for “outdoorsy” types. But, trust me, even if you don’t fit that profile (which isn’t quite accurate anyway) it will be absolutely worth your while to give climbing a try.

Here’s why:

Climbing engages your entire body in a way that most activities can’t. You have to coordinate movements in your arms, trunk, and legs to pull and push your way up.

This full body work is stimulating for so many great reasons, including concentration, a great balance between your pushing and pulling abilities, and for the pure proprioceptive joy in moving your body toward the goal of the top.

Exercise programs and trainers have a tendency to group exercises into categories such as upper and lower body, pushing, pulling, rotations, etc.

It makes sense with regards to making sure you aren’t neglecting certain areas, but be wary of trying to isolate your actions so much that you forget your body moves as a unit (or at least it should if everything is working together).

We evolve and learn through goal oriented movement, and movements that engage the entire body aren’t strictly divided into push, pull, etc.

The Real Meaning of Functional Fitness

Think about the last time you got roped in to help a friend move.

All that carrying and lifting and maneuvering can’t be classified into distinct groups of actions. When you are hauling that old, heavy couch up a narrow stairwell, you’re pretty much doing whatever you can to accomplish that goal.

That’s what real life, practical movement is like. And that’s what climbing is like.

It’s a great combination of full body strength (focusing on your leg, core, and shoulders) and strategic body positioning, requiring you to push and pull to explore all sorts of movement variations while balancing your own bodyweight. Sometimes you’re doing more of one than another and then that switches, and sometimes it may seem like you are using every bit of muscle action you can muster.

I can’t think of anything better than that to describe “functional fitness”.

There are countless variations I could show you here, but what you’ll find in the following video are just 10 of my favorite rope climbing variations. They do get progressively more difficult, so start with the first variation and work your way up (see what I did there?).

Variation

Description

Jump Assist Pull-Up

• Start with the rope close to your body, and take a small hop as you reach up and grasp on to the rope.
• Keep your hands a few inches apart and alternate hand positions with each repetition.
• The jump and grab on the rope is a great start for the gripping strength you’ll need to climb.
• If this is too much for your hands, go ahead and start with your hands on the rope as you jump up. After a few workouts like this you’ll be able to do the jump and grab variant.

Leg Assist Pull-Up

• Start up on your toes with your hips back as you hold on to the rope.
• Pull yourself up with your elbows close to your sides and use just enough force through your legs to pull up as high as you can.
• Get into a good rhythm and alternate hand positions as you do each repetition.

Row to Pull-Up

• In the row to pull-up, start with enough knee bend to have your upper body parallel to the ground when you start the pull.
• Pull strongly and sit back a bit as you go up to turn the movement into a pull-up.
• Find a good rhythm and work on alternating the hands as you grasp the rope.

Alternating Pull-Up

• Reach up high with the hands positioned close together.
• Keep your elbows in close and pull yourself as high as possible.
• Alternate grips with each repetition.

Leg Assist Climb

• Instead of a long pull as you did with the row to pull-up, climb hand over hand to get to the pull-up position.
• This is the actual action of climbing but with lessened bodyweight.

Butterfly Assist Climb

• Begin with a jump assist pull-up with as high a reach and pull as you can muster.
• Then once you are up, place the soles of your feet to sandwich the rope and squeeze tight to help yourself use the rope to climb on up.

Pull-Up Climb

• As you start heading into this variation, you can make your climbing motion shorter and reach just a few inches above one hand with the other.
• When you get stronger, you’ll then work on reaching up higher and higher for a longer pull.
• Work on getting to the top of the rope with long “strides”.

Straddle Butterfly Assist Climb

• The exercise starts out like the previous butterfly assist climb.
• This time, as you pull, you’ll go out of the butterfly and lift your legs up into a straddle for a second.
• It’s definitely more difficult than it looks.

Full Straddle Climb

• You’ll notice that the rope will tend to swing more than in the previous variations.
• A lot of your energy will be used toward keeping that sway under control.

Straddle V-Sit Climb

• Once a full straddle climb isn’t much of a challenge you can progress by lifting the legs up as high as possible in a straddle.
• Coordination and strength are taxed here to the fullest.

In the resources section further down in this article, you’ll find a link to a climbing rope I recommend if you’re interested in getting one to start working on these variations.

Rock Climbing Techniques for Beginners

As I mentioned, rock climbing (also known as wall climbing) is definitely a more common sport, and is getting ever more popular, for good reason. Bouldering (a type of rock climbing) is a great way for beginners to get started since these routes are usually shorter and don’t require ropes or harnesses.

While rope climbing is primarily an upper body dominant activity, rock climbing is actually more dependent on your core strength.

It may seem like rock climbers are just pulling themselves up the wall with sheer strength, but that’s not the case. The legs and core should actually be doing most of the work, with the arms acting as support.

The variations I’ll show you are not meant to be exhaustive, or really even prescriptive. These are merely some suggestions of technique variations you can play around with.

You’ll notice that some of these variations place more emphasis on the upper body or lower body. Try both and see what you like better.

Variation

Description

Beginner Jump Climb

• You can practice by gathering a secure foot hold and grabbing a hand hold on a jutting that is at chest or neck level.
• This allows you to pull and let go as your momentum swings you up for another grab higher up on the wall.

Upper Body Base Climb

• In this move, you’ll notice that I’m spreading my hand fairly far apart and the lower arm is locked straight.
• This provides a stable base to swing my legs up and around to land on another foot hold.

Leg Emphasis Climb

• To work on your leg flexibility and strength from odd angles, hold your hands close together and reach up and out as far as you can with one foot then the other.
• Great foot and leg control and strength can give you a lot more options in rock climbing and in life in general.

Base Straight Arm Climb

• Unlike before where you swing your legs around, you’ll now look at the options you have for hand and foot holds with one arm locked out as support.
• Keep your bottom arm straight as you move your other arm and your legs up the wall.

Side Climb

• Here, you are limiting yourself to increase the difficulty and as preparation for what may happen when you go up on a difficult rock.
• Keep your body turned toward one side as you scale the wall.

Of course, you’ll need access to a climbing wall to try these out, but with the growing popularity of indoor climbing, there’s a good chance you can find something near you.

Locomotion Drills to Help You Ease in to Climbing

While the variations above will help you get started with climbing, locomotion exercises can be a great addition to your climbing practice, especially in the beginning.

It targets many of the same body mechanics, but since you’ll be practicing on the ground, it’s definitely easier to get more frequent practice with locomotive drills than you might be able to with climbing itself. You can practice wherever you are, and you’ll be preparing your body for what it needs to get the most out of your climbing sessions.

I asked one of our GMB Trainers, Mercedes Pollmeier, who’s a competitive climber in Seattle, to share how she uses locomotive drills to help her students with their climbing. Take a look:

Variation

Description

Bear

• Start in A-Frame position.
• Push shoulders up to ears, and look at your toes.
• Press your heels down to the ground.
• Initiate the movement by first moving one hand, reach forward and let your foot follow naturally.
• Place the foot down on the ground and drive your body forward.

Application of the Bear on the Wall

• When one foot is placed high, the same side hand reaches up.
• Drive hips into the wall to make movement more efficient
• Turn knee inward to initiate the hip turn.

Bear Hip Turn

• Start in A-Frame position.
• Push shoulders up to ears, and look at your toes.
• Press your heels down to the ground.
• Initiate the movement by first moving one hand, reach forward.
• Turn knee inward to initiate the hip turn while letting your foot follow naturally.
• Place the foot down on the ground and drive your body forward.

Open Hip Movement on Wall

• Knee drives out to the side while the other leg extends to the opposite direction.
• Hand moves on on the same site as the foot that you drive off of.

Lizard

• Start in the bear position.
• Bring the foot up as high as you can next to the hand.
• Once you can do this basic pattern, make it more challenging by coming down lower.

Even if you don’t have access to a rope or a climbing gym, practicing these locomotive drills will help you build strength, mobility, and control throughout your body. And whenever you do have a chance to try out the climbing variations I showed you above, you’ll find it to be far easier than it would be otherwise.

Resources for Getting Started With Climbing

Getting started with climbing doesn’t have to be very complicated–you just find a place to climb and start trying things out.

There are, however, some resources that can help set you up for success.

Don’t worry about spending hundreds of dollars on gear right off the bat! The first step I’d recommend is trying out the locomotive drills, then finding a climbing gym near you where you can try out a class or start practicing the techniques I’ve shown you.

Expand Your Creative Horizons

I love climbing and hiking, and I try to get some in whenever I can. But while I’m jonesing for my next trip out in the wild, I can make do okay with the rope and small climbing wall rigged up in my gym.

As you can see from the videos shown in this post, you will only be limited by your creativity on the rope and climbing wall.

For full body coordination and strength, not only in the large back, shoulder, and arm muscles, but also in the hands and feet, climbing of all variations is a great way to develop all-around fitness.

If you enjoyed playing around with the locomotive drills in this article, and you want a more defined routine to follow as you get started with your climbing journey, sign up for our free Bodyweight Circuit Routine. It incorporates locomotive drills along with other bodyweight movements that will help you get strong for all the activities you love.

Bodyweight Routine to Help You Get Started

As you get started with climbing, our free bodyweight circuit routine will help you ease into this new activity by building the strength, mobility, and control you need.